Valentina demonstrated her loyalty by her willingness to deal with Briggs without being asked to. The idea had been hers. She had not only come up with the idea, she had volunteered to do the deed. And she had done well. She didn’t let it get messy; her approach to the job was clear-headed and methodical, which was in stark comparison to the incredibly sexy result. Between Roxanne’s skill as an amateur photographer and Valentina’s vast experience as an actress, the resulting photographs were so starkly sexual and incriminating that it was hard to believe the guy on the bed had been unconscious the whole time. Ricardo wished all of his employees had such initiative.
As part of an agreement with her family, Ricardo had promised Valentina to Victor, but she was fighting it every step of the way -- the same way his Rubia had fought him all those years ago. The thought brought a faint, sadistic smile to his face. Yes, his son needed a woman who would challenge him. Valentina suited him perfectly.
“Valentina,” Ricardo said, “you have impressed me. The blackmail idea was inspired. The photos you and Roxanne created will give us the leverage we need to wrap up this deal sooner than I had hoped. Due to your efforts, I have no doubt Briggs will see things our way.”
“Yes, sir. I couldn’t allow him to get in the way of cartel business.”
“Indeed. You have a bright future ahead of you with us. I want the two of you to begin wedding plans, sooner rather than later.”
At his father’s ringing endorsement of his woman, a rare smile tilted Victor’s lips, albeit a sadistic one. “Nothing would please me more. Consider it done.”
“Yes, sir,” she said demurely, with her hands clasped, white-knuckled, in her lap.
“Very well,” Ricardo said with a nod. “Now, I need to speak with my son alone.”
Valentina rose and, avoiding Victor’s eyes, gave a slight bow of her head in Ricardo’s direction before departing.
The door had no more closed than Ricardo leaned over the desk and snapped, “You’ve gotten what you want, boy. I’m giving her to you. Now, I fully expect that son of a bitch, William Briggs, to be in my pocket by the end of the week. I don’t give a fuck what you have to do to make it happen. That woman of yours has laid the foundation. Now,” he said as he sat back in his chair, “I expect you to finish the job.”
Victor studied the knife he had pulled from his pocket, fingering it lightly. “I’m looking forward to it, Father. Very much.”
Victor’s eyes became glazed as he thought ahead to how he’d get even with the paunchy bastard who’d seen his woman nearly naked. The fucker would die regretting the day he strayed from his wife and picked up a beautiful woman in a bar.
Victor was as sadistic as his father and uncle ever were, and he was looking forward to getting his revenge. The thought got him hard. He frowned as he shifted in his seat, then glanced down to find a spot of blood on the pad of his thumb. Apparently, he’d been clenching the knife a little too tight.
He brought the drop of blood to his tongue, smiling as the metallic taste hit his tongue. Yeah, he’d have his revenge on that fucker, and he’d make his soon-to-be wife watch.
Valentina resisted the urge to slam the door to her suite. The only thing that stopped her was the gossip that would ensue if she did. The walls had ears around here and anything concerning the Ramirez women was always a hot topic. Her soon-to-be husband had won again. Damn him!
He was the only who could make her feel such a clusterfuck of emotions. When it came to Victor Ramirez, she was all over the place: she loved him, she hated him, she desired him, and wanted to get as far away from him as she could. But most of all, she had the need to drive him crazy.
He wasn’t through with her, she knew that. He was going to make her pay for going to that bar and doing that job on her own. She kept telling herself it didn’t matter, that she didn’t care, but the gnawing fear of the unknown was still in the back of her mind. She was well acquainted with Victor’s possessive nature, but she had the feeling she hadn’t seen the worst of it yet.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice he had come in until she turned and saw him leaning back against the closed door. His pompous smirk sent her into a rage and before she could question the wisdom of her decision, she lunged at him.
“My little hellcat, I fucking love it.” He grabbed her by her shoulders and pinned her down on the bed. As she writhed and strained beneath him, he yanked her dress up over her hips and ripped at her panties until they lay shredded on the floor. He unzipped his pants and lowered them just enough to release his aching hard-on. He palmed its heavy weight, stroking the shaft.
Valentina’s eyes were fixed greedily on his cock, admiring the thick shaft with its thick veins coursing along its length to the broad, swollen head glistening with pre-cum. Victor was blessed with the kind of cock other men envied and every woman craved.
He pushed her legs back, rubbing the head of his cock up and down her creamy slit, giving special attention to her clit. He bit back a smile when he felt the energy in the room shift; she stopped all pretense of fighting him and instead began rolling her hips toward him, begging him to put it in her and make her come.
It had always been this way between them. She never came to him easily; she made him work for it, made him prove to her every time how good they were together. Her resistance was an incredibly gratifying dynamic in their sexual chemistry and he made no secret of how much he got off on subduing her. She had made it clear early on that she didn’t want nice, polite sex, and he enjoyed the pleasure of taking what he wanted.
Now that he had her mindless and willing beneath him, he teased her. She scowled at him, fuming as she pushed her hips up trying to grasp on to his cock to fill the aching emptiness within her.
“I hate you,” she groaned every time he denied her the pleasure of penetration.
“Mmm, you want this cock…pussy’s so wet and swollen. Why do you fight me every time, hmm?” he asked as he palmed her breasts, rolling her nipples under his thumbs. “I fucking love you with everything in me. I’ll love you until the stars fall from the sky. I’ve loved you from the first day I met you. No, baby,” he growled in warning as she grabbed his ass and tried to yank him toward her. “You’re not getting this cock until you’re so hungry for it that every inhibition you have lays shattered at my feet. I need you. I’m going to do anything and everything to make you mine.”
“Victor,” she gasped as she clenched his biceps, enjoying his hard muscles under her fingertips, “can’t you see I’ve always been yours?”
He almost believed her. Almost. “I’ll know when you’re really mine.”
He continued teasing her with just the head of his cock. Then, without warning he plunged inside, responding to the primal need to mate, to take, to claim. She writhed and moaned, lost in the pleasure of his touch, wanton with no reservations, no inhibitions. Giving herself over to him, at last, with no shame.
As he moved inside her, the truth hit him, consuming his every thought: if she had his baby, she would be his forever. Energized by the need to put a baby in her, he flipped Valentina over onto her hands and knees. He pulled her hips toward him and shoved inside her like a man possessed, emboldened by her guttural grunt of pleasure as his cock found purchase deep inside her.
“That’s it, take it,” he groaned. “Time’s up, baby. You’re going to bear my sons and there will be no getting away. You’re mine and this baby will be mine. Ours.” He slid his hand around her waist and stroked her clit. His touch sent her into a frenzy of need as she pushed back against him for even deeper contact.
The orgasm built inside her until she peaked and tumbled over into an abyss of pleasure. “Yeah, that’s it, baby,” he groaned at the sight of his shaft, gleaming with the sheen of her arousal, and her pert ass thrust high in the air as she writhed beneath him. He grit his teeth, gasping as he told her how it was going to be. “I want you, all of you. My wife. My lover. Mother of my children. Everything...I want everything…
gonna give you everything.”
He pushed her shoulders down into the mattress and covered her body with his as he took her, using his knees to spread her legs even wider so she could take him even deeper.
As her body began to quake beneath him, Victor set the caveman within him free, hips bucking wildly as he closed in on his own orgasm. His balls drew up tight and his cock surged forward, instinctively seeking its true north. Driven by pure instinct, he clamped his teeth onto the warm flesh between her neck and shoulder, biting down hard as he came, like a rutting stallion claiming a skittish mare.
Chapter Twenty Three
“You can’t go, Caden. Believe me, you aren’t going to want to see what’s going on anyway. I don’t think any woman would want to see the horrendous things that are going to happen tonight.” Tony just looked at her and shook his head.
“Who are you going with, Tony?”
“Victor.”
“Oh, boy, I can only imagine. Once you two terrible twins get together, madness and mayhem are sure to follow.”
“Baby, in your wildest dreams you couldn’t conjure up the things Victor has in mind for William Briggs tonight. He feels the same way about this guy as I do about Santiago.”
“You know, there’s this one thing about Santiago that I haven’t told you. I don’t think it really means anything, but still…”
“What is it?”
“Well, you know how he’d come see me at The Club.”
“Yeah. I remember that. Do go on,” he said flatly.
“Well, we just talked at a table usually, but we’d get pretty flirty sometimes…”
“Caden, I swear to God…”
“Sorry, it’s just that there were a couple of times when I swear I felt a garter belt under his pants--” As he rose to his feet and glared at her, she continued quickly, “No, no, I didn’t go under his pants, I mean, just, oh hell, Tony, can you just let me finish?”
He sat down slowly, chest heaving. “You better be quick about it because I’m about to track his sorry ass down single-handed and deal with this shit.”
“No, I was just patting his leg as I laughed at something he’d said, and that’s when I felt it. He was wearing a garter under his clothes. I could tell because I felt the lacy strap, you know…when I patted his leg…after he made a joke...” She trailed off, gulping as she waited for his reaction.
“The only thing saving you from a spanking right now is that your days of ‘visiting’ with customers are over. Now, are you sure about this?” Tony asked. He was a live-and-let-live kind of guy, but he knew the Sinaloan cartel might not be so open-minded.
“A woman knows these things, Tony. I know my garters, okay? Professional stripper here, remember?” she laughed. “And there was this other time that I swear I saw a red bra strap under his shirt. One night he came in wearing a button-down shirt that had a couple more buttons than usual undone. I guess he thought it made him look sexy, I don’t know. Anyway, he leaned over to pick up his drink and, from where I was sitting beside him, I could see the strap underneath the fabric of his shirt. He had a sports coat on so I couldn’t see anything else, but I know I saw a red strap. I think he cross-dresses. I never brought it up before because it didn’t seem important, but I thought I should tell you.”
That got his attention. “Did you notice anything while he was holding you at the house?”
“No, but I asked him about it at one point. We talked about a lot of things so it wasn’t a big, dramatic moment by any means. I think he expected me to mock him, but when he saw that I wasn’t judging him he opened up about it.”
Tony remained sitting on the edge of the bed and just listened. She was finally going to talk about her time with Santiago. It was a good sign—it meant she trusted him. He was now the one she confided in, the one she looked to for support. He didn’t want to break the mood and have her shut down so he just let her talk.
“When I asked him why he did it, he said it helped him relive the killings. He wanted to experience the moment of death through his victims’ eyes. Apparently, every time he had worn lingerie under his clothes when he came to see me at The Club, he had just taken it off a d-dead body--” She sobbed, gulped hard and struggled to find the words to continue. “Can you imagine that—wanting to relive the death of another person? I can understand why you kill, why your family kills. You have a purpose, but him…he kills for the sake of killing. I will never understand that.”
“That’s because you’re an angel and he’s insane,” he said as he wrapped her in his arms. “He’s unable to feel real emotion, regardless of what he may have tried to tell you. He has no sympathy, no empathy, only the need and the drive to kill. Trust me, any emotions he does manage to feel are purely self-serving and a reflection of his own ego.”
“He loved me.” The way her voice was so soft and sincere pulled on his heart, but he didn’t respond. He hurt for her, for all she’d been through, but she had to find her way past it. Death was never easy, but it was harder when you had a connection – even a sick, twisted one – with the person dying. And as far as Tony was concerned, Santiago was a dead man walking.
“It’ll be his undoing—his need for trophies.”
“Why do you say that, Tony?”
“I don’t know, just a feeling.”
She placed her hand on his forearm and looked at him earnestly. “Please, be safe. Don’t get killed. I need you.”
“Death is coming tonight, Caden, but not to me. It won’t even be by my hand.”
Victor’s jaw ticked as he watched the downtown, stone-hewn house from a nondescript black van parked across the street. It wasn’t the luxurious suburban home Victor had expected, but was more of a fixer-upper.
He looked down at his watch and grimaced. Briggs was late for his nightly stroll through the park. The fucker was proving to be even more of a pain in his ass than he had expected. Victor shifted impatiently in his seat and had just about given up when Briggs finally appeared on the front steps and headed toward Central Park.
Schedules and habits were a stalker’s best friends. He had made a point of knowing the man’s schedule, from the time he woke up in the morning to when he turned off the lights in his bedroom after reading a chapter from whatever bestseller was on his nightstand. Victor was disciplined when it came to tracking an enemy, or Valentina, for that matter.
“What’s his weakness?” Victor looked over at his brother in the dimly lit van, waiting for an answer. It had been their favorite game when they were kids—Tony priding himself on figuring out a person’s weakness, and Victor doing his best to stump him. So far, Tony had a perfect record, much to Victor’s perpetual irritation. He’d never been able to catch his brother not having the right answer. He always got it right.
“Heights.” Tony answered without hesitation.
“How do you fucking do that?” Victor had always been impressed with his brother’s ability to read people.
“It’s just what I do,” Tony replied. “I’m a student of human nature, my man. You stalk, I observe. That’s why we’re a great team. Used to drive mom and dad crazy, didn’t it, when we could always figure out what they were up to? I don’t think a Christmas ever went by that we didn’t already know what we were getting.”
“What’s your woman afraid of?”
“Roaches.”
“Huh. How about Valentina?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Mediocrity. She fears being just okay when it comes to anything she does. She’s an overachiever. It’s how she won over Dad and Uncle Antonio. She plays hard to get with you, but she’s loved you as much as you’ve loved her from the day she first laid eyes on you.”
“I assume you’re insinuating that we act outside of the boundaries of social norms. The whole damn family does that, bro.”
“That’s what I’m saying. You’re a Ramirez; you two dysfunctional fuck-ups are made for each other.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.” Altho
ugh he was being sarcastic, it meant a lot when Tony said Valentina loved him. If Tony said it, you could bet it was a fact. The guy had a way of reading people that no one else in the cartel possessed. If he wanted to know what made you tick, you might as well open your closet door and let the skeletons out because he’d surely find them.
Victor put the van in gear and began easing his way toward the route Briggs was walking.
Tony’s question cut through the silence. “How are you going to kill him?”
“Well,” Victor mused aloud, “I was going to torture him, but if he’s afraid of heights then who am I to deprive him of the chance to meet the Grim Reaper in a way that will terrorize him before the final curtain call?”
“Still angry about your woman going on that job?”
“Damn straight, I am. He imagined himself fucking her, then he was in the same room with her when she was damn near naked. He probably thinks he’d be in a world of hurt if his little wifey found out, but that’s nothing. Nobody sees my woman like that but me.”
“I hear you, brother, but wasn’t he passed out when she took her clothes off?”
Victor’s jaw clenched and he growled, “Don’t even say the words, man. I don’t care if he was conscious or not. He’s gonna pay for that shit.”
“And how will she pay?”
“The same way Mother did, of course. She’ll be forced into marriage and motherhood. The legacy lives on, right? I can’t go against family tradition.” His comment was facetious, but the look on his face was deadly serious.
Tony checked the chamber to make sure his Glock was loaded. The sound sent a jolt of adrenaline through him, readying him for the task at hand. “Pull over right here behind this tree. When he walks back this way we’ll take him down.”
Victor pulled over, giving Tony time to get in position. He parked close enough to be nearby if his brother got into trouble, but far enough away to not attract attention. He slouched down in the seat, settling in to wait for opportunity to knock. It was only a matter of time now until he would have his revenge.
Inevitable (Colombian Cartel Book 3) Page 11
